Continental SEA...More than just swords & knives??

aiontay · 13th April 2010, 12:54 PM

I'm not entirely sure why there aren't more Burmese weapons out there, but keep in mind most of those weapons would have had to have been collected pre-1940s since after that the political situation and civil war would have made it difficult to get stuff out. Lots of antiques were smuggled out since the 1940s, but I suspect trying to smuggle a pole arm used from an elephant across the Thai border was much more difficult than getting a sword across. On the other hand, why didn't those Victorians collect a bunch of those things?

When I was working on a crop substitution project in the Northern Shan State I went out to visit one of the villages we were workiing in. We had helped the Kachins buy a tractor for use by the whole community. They were using it to plow a field. As they were plowing I noticed that the counterweight on the front of the plow looked like a small cannon. I asked, and sure enough, it was a small cannon, maybe British or Burman, that someone had found out in the woods. It made a perfect counterweight to the plow. I suspect a few of those pole arms ended their days in a similarly utilitarian way.

As for private armies, you might want to check out Martin Smith's "Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity", and his chapter on the roots of insurgency. No pictures, but a pretty good short history of their role in Burmese history.

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13th April 2010, 12:54 PM	#16
aiontay Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 88	I'm not entirely sure why there aren't more Burmese weapons out there, but keep in mind most of those weapons would have had to have been collected pre-1940s since after that the political situation and civil war would have made it difficult to get stuff out. Lots of antiques were smuggled out since the 1940s, but I suspect trying to smuggle a pole arm used from an elephant across the Thai border was much more difficult than getting a sword across. On the other hand, why didn't those Victorians collect a bunch of those things? When I was working on a crop substitution project in the Northern Shan State I went out to visit one of the villages we were workiing in. We had helped the Kachins buy a tractor for use by the whole community. They were using it to plow a field. As they were plowing I noticed that the counterweight on the front of the plow looked like a small cannon. I asked, and sure enough, it was a small cannon, maybe British or Burman, that someone had found out in the woods. It made a perfect counterweight to the plow. I suspect a few of those pole arms ended their days in a similarly utilitarian way. As for private armies, you might want to check out Martin Smith's "Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity", and his chapter on the roots of insurgency. No pictures, but a pretty good short history of their role in Burmese history.